Whiff of danger in one stinker of a 'thriller'

Carla Meyer, Chronicle Movie Writer

Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 3, 2004

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Actress Diane Kruger stars as Lisa in a scene from the new psychological drama film "Wicker Park" with co-star Josh Hartnett (R) in this undated publicity photograph. The film is about a young Chicago investment banker played by Hartnett who believes a woman he sees in a cafe is his long-lost love. Atilla Dory/MGM/Handout Ran on: 09-03-2004
Lisa (Diane Kruger) and Matthew (Josh Hartnett) are drawn to each other in &quo;Wicker Park.&quo; less

Actress Diane Kruger stars as Lisa in a scene from the new psychological drama film "Wicker Park" with co-star Josh Hartnett (R) in this undated publicity photograph. The film is about a young Chicago ... more

The studio behind "Wicker Park" bills it as a "romantic thriller." But it's actually an example of an even more unusual subgenre: the dumb, suspense- free and undersexed stalker drama. It just might be the first and last movie of its kind.

Named after a park and trendy neighborhood in Chicago, "Wicker Park" was adapted from the French film "L'Appartement," the title of which loosely translates to "Do Not Remake in English." Thrills and romance both went missing somewhere over the Atlantic.

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Lisa, the object of obsession, does have the air of a French heroine, however: She is alluring, enigmatic and a modern dancer. That's about all we know about Lisa, played with cool distance by Diane Kruger, who was Helen in "Troy." That, and that she once toured Europe in "Cabaret."

These details arrive via flashbacks, as Matthew (Josh Hartnett), a guy who loved and lost Lisa two years earlier, thinks he spots her in a restaurant. A date with his fiancee keeps him from following the woman. But he enters the phone booth where she has just been and smells Lisa into existence. In one of director Paul McGuigan's many superfluous visual flourishes, poor Hartnett has to sniff the air -- to indicate special-effects vapors added in postproduction. In fact, Hartnett does an unusual amount of nose work in this picture. He is often required to pace in the snow, expelling clouds of visible breath from his nostrils.

He's not just a pacer, though. He takes action. The woman in the phone booth has helpfully left behind her hotel key with the room number on it. She isn't in the room, but he lets himself in, and even falls asleep on the bed. He later tracks the woman who might be Lisa to her apartment, and breaks into the place.

All of this might be plausible, in a bad-thriller sort of way, had Lisa simply vanished. But she didn't. She just didn't call to say she was leaving when she took off to do Fosse in Budapest. That she is back in Chicago two years later shouldn't be a jolt to Matthew. He could have just looked her up in the phone book.

A flashback scene of their lovemaking is meant to support his obsession, but it's too freakily edited to mean anything. Instead of lingering on sensuality, McGuigan speeds up the footage and offers blurred close-ups of Hartnett and Kruger's faces. Not hot.

Hartnett's aw-shucks appeal makes him the de facto hero of the movie, but his character is heinous. He chases Lisa even though he's got the fiancee, then flirts with a woman (Rose Byrne) living in the apartment he believes is Lisa's. Single, white and female, she smells like Lisa, wears Lisa's coat and is also named Lisa. This is all probably just a coincidence. How many stalkers can one regional-theater dancer have?

"Wicker Park" tries to perpetuate the fallacy that brunette women are mousier than blond women, going so far as to dress the lovely Byrne, who resembles Isabel Adjani, in geek-style button-up collar and bad hair, as if she were some secondhand Lisa. But Byrne has a vivid presence, and she and Matthew Lillard, as the Hartnett character's wry and sweet sidekick, are far more interesting than the central pair.

Nobody dies or is wounded or even physically threatened in "Wicker Park." The highest stakes involve hurt feelings. Movie violence is terrible, of course, unless a thrown chair or a raised voice can work as a storytelling tool. The attractions here aren't fatal, or lethal, or even interesting.